Author: Joel

Elderly Syrian Christians Released by the Islamic State

In February 2015, the Islamic State overran the Assyrian Christian villages along the Khabur river in Syria, and abducted around 300 people. We are very happy to announce that today, 22 of them – mostly sick or elderly people – were released after negotiations. These pictures of the freed hostages were provided to us by… Read more »

Pope Francis: “Genocide” of Middle East Christians Must End!

Pope Francis has called for an end to the genocide of Christians in the Middle East. “Today we are dismayed to see how in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus,” Pope Francis said in a speech in… Read more »

The Tablet: “Tangle of alliances is throttling Middle East’s Christians”

Dr. John Eibner, the CEO of Christian Solidarity International (CSI-USA) has a new op-ed piece in The Tablet:  “Four years ago this month, President Barack Obama made a fateful decision. He announced that ‘the time has come for President Assad to step aside … for the sake of the Syrian people.’ This signal for regime change… Read more »

Interview with Christian Parents of Toddler Abducted by IS

  Since overrunning large parts of Iraq and Syria last summer, the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) has taken hundreds of Christians hostage. The youngest known Christian hostage is Christina Khoder Abada, who was three years old when she was abducted. CSI has been bringing relief aid to persecuted Iraqi Christians since 2007, and has… Read more »

CSI Responds to Hunger Crisis in South Sudan

“When I was a young person in South Sudan, no one ate leaves, but now people are very desperate and they eat anything they can find to save their lives.” Franco Majok, CSI’s program manager for South Sudan, said this to us last month after completing a CSI food relief mission in North Bahr el… Read more »

700 People Rescued from Slavery Since February

  In two separate liberation actions in February 2015 and April 2015, underground networks in North Sudan supported by CSI have rescued 700 people from slavery, and repatriated them to their homeland of South Sudan! Among the slavery survivors are: Ayel Gau Wany – “I was captured with my mother and three sisters when I… Read more »

Cengiz Aktar: Turkish State Increasingly “Schizophrenic” on Religious Minorities

Turkish Scholar Sees Growing Awareness in Turkey of Genocidal Past ZURICH, April 1 – The Turkish scholar and journalist, Prof. Cengiz Aktar, sees a Turkish state policy towards religious minorities that is “schizophrenic.” Speaking at a CSI event in Zurich on the 1st of April, Aktar observed that Turkey’s Islamist government has loosened the state’s… Read more »

New Report: Islamic State Guilty of “Genocide”

“Information exists which would support a prima facie case that ISIS forces have committed the crime of genocide against religious and ethnic minorities in northern Iraq.” – Between the Millstones: Iraq’s Minorities Since the Fall of Mosul, Minority Rights Group International, Institute of International Law and Human Rights, No Peace Without Justice and the Unrepresented… Read more »

ForeignPolicy.com: “The Real War on Christianity”

ForeignPolicy.com’s new story on the Islamic State’s genocide of Christians in Iraq and Syria notes that CSI was among the first NGOs to warn of the threat: Christian Solidarity International, a nonprofit that provides support for victims of religious persecution, issued a “genocide warning” for religious minorities in the Middle East as early as 2011,… Read more »